Half of a decade

I could have just entitled this post "Five years", but then what's poetic about that? Then again, one might immediately ask, "What's so poetic about 'Half a decade'"?

Touche'!

As you might have inferred, last Friday the 13th was Jack's fifth birthday. Technically, and Mare and I have had this conversation/argument before, it's his sixth birthday if you include his birthday. To be specific, we celebrated the fifth anniversary of his birthday. There! Are you happy?

As on his very first birthday (the day of his birth) it was a Friday the thirteenth. Our household does not give credence to friggatriskaidekaphobia, (I'm not kidding, click on this to read the wikipedia entry) so we had no reservations whatsoever about celebrating his birthday. We walked out of the house and made our way under a ladder, shooed away a black cat that lay in our path, and broke to pieces that pesky mirror we'd been wanting to get rid of and went on our merry way.

After a hearty breakfast intended to sustain us through a big, big day, we loaded up the vehicular and merrily rowed along north to the campus of The University of Kansas Museum of Natural History; otherwise known to our children (the ones who can talk) as "The Dinosaur Museum" (accompanied by excited shrills of, well, excitement {as if shrills can be anything else than excited!}) It took us a little while to get off the ground and going, mainly because I, in my desire to be prepared, focused my considerable technical savvy upon one of our vehicular's wipers. It was damaged, I remembered, and the forecast for that Friday the 13th of 2012 called for thunderstorms and rain showers, and sprinkling, and high winds, and precipitation. While rummaging in the trunk, actually I wasn't so much rummaging as placing the big stroller in the trunk, I noticed an extra wiper blade and naturally I was pleased with the immediate assumption that it was the right size and that I was looking at a quick and easy fix. Notice the word "assumption".

Well of course I removed the old, damaged wiper and it fell apart in my hands. Good thing I had a brand new wiper that fits . . . oh no I don't, it's the wrong size! How did I overlook that? (see previous paragraph: keyword assumption). So, I thought, "I know, I'll just install the old one back on so we can get on the road...oh that's right, it already fell apart in my hands! Can't do that. I thought briefly about swapping one out from our other car, but by then the kids had arrived outside and Marian, too and were all expectantly climbing in to depart. So, since there was now a metal nub on the end of the wiper arm where there was previously a wiper that was damaged, I had to protect the glass windshield from being scratched when the wiper returned to its place of rest (no that's not a euphemism for death, but the position the wiper returns to when not in use), so I placed my leather work glove over the metal nub for that express purpose. There is a mechanic's shop I'd check at the end of our street that I hoped sold wipers to avoid driving all the way to the south end of town to purchase new ones.

They didn't sell wipers at the mechanic's shop at the end of our street and I had to drive our family all the way to the south end of town to O'Reilly's auto parts to purchase and install new wipers, all the while Jack the birthday boy was asking why we were heading to Humboldt and not to Lawrence. No wait, it gets better. While I was inside the mechanic's shop inquiring about wipers, the O'Reilly's delivery guy was there, had just dropped off a package there, and was leaving to go...where else? Back to the south end of town to O'Reilly's, where we were now headed. No, wait, it still gets better. We actually backed out first and the O'Reilly's delivery guy next to us (with his reverse lights on, because he was backing out to go where we were going, or vice versa) was hoking his horn and pointing at my work glove on the windshield which he thought I'd neglected to remove. But wait, it still gets better. At the traffic stop light, he was next to us in his vehicle and continued to honk and point at my windshield and the glove. So, I rolled my window down and was mouthing the words "I know, it's okay!" to him, because it was the O'Reilly's delivery truck and O'Reilly's didn't want to spend a lot of money on their delivery truck, so that meant they purchased the model without power windows, so the driver was unable to roll the passenger side window down in order to hear me. Again, I'm assuming this is the case with the O'Reilly's delivery truck. It could be the truck did have power windows and they were inoperable for some reason, or that the delivery driver didn't know how to roll the passenger side window down, or that he simply chose not to do so. Whatever the case, we had a good long, confusing exchange that I would describe as silent, were it not for the horn on the delivery truck which sounded frequently, and was assuredly, operating in peak condition.

So, we were intermittently alongside of said delivery truck and confused delivery truck driver, or a car length ahead of or behind for the entire way across town, going to the same place he was headed, all the while I was becoming furious with myself for being so hasty as to not check that the spare wiper in the trunk was indeed the correct size before removing the damaged one, and cussing whoever it was that put a spare wiper in the trunk, which didn't fit! Probably me. At O'Reilly's, I encountered the driver and I fake laughed about it as I explained about the glove and waited for my turn in line to purchase two new wipers, because I was getting two of them, brand new ones as much trouble as this was turning out to be! The salesman was kind enough to install them, (I could have, I assure you, I've done hundreds of them!) because I was too mad at myself and fearful of making another time wasting mistake.

All of this was before we left town to get to the museum. Part two is forthcoming.